A pretty slick plan, actually – Rich Lowry explains at NRO’s The Corner:
…Boehner has rallied House Republicans behind a short-term, one-week CR that will cut another $12 billion and fund the military for the rest of the year. This move shows Republicans are aware of the first rule of a shutdown fight — don’t get blamed for the shutdown.
The short-term measure is going to put Harry Reid and the White House in a tight spot. By putting the ball in their court, it puts them in the position of making the affirmative decision to shut the government and do it while turning away a bill to fund the military. Also, in the context of a $1.5 trillion deficit, $12 billion seems piddling and — together with the prior $10 billion of cuts — it still falls short of the $33 billion Democrats have agreed to. If they reject the bill anyway, it’s going to make it easier to blame them for a shutdown; if they accept, Republicans will have gotten $22 billion in cuts even before a final deal…
That could be a way to do it – keep up the CRs but each time select a must-pass element to fund something for the rest of the year, throw in a ten or twenty billion in cuts and defy Reid to not hold a vote, or Obama to veto. The Democrats, of course, are quite happy with either an open-ended CR or, better, just some papering over the cracks deal to carry us through until 9/30/11. They really don’t want a shut down and, naturally, don’t want any real cuts. Time to force matters, and this might do it.
Keep in mind this is a tricky business – we very much don’t want to get actually blamed by the public for a shut down (Democrats and the MSM will, of course, blame us no matter what…but what they say is not, these days, necessarily what the people will agree to). This tactic by the GOP might force the Democrat to either clearly take the blame, or agree to at least do some more cuts…and then be faced with it, again. That, in turn, might slowly force them back and get them to agree to some real cuts…and, of course, the whole fight right now just leads up to the budget battle for FY 2012.
We’ll see how this comes out, but I’m cautiously optimistic that the GOP is starting to think about what they want to do and how to get it.
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